I spent four years as Forbes' Girl Friday, which to me meant doing a little bit of everything at once. As a member of the Forbes Entrepreneurs team, I looked at booming business and startup life with a female gaze. I worked on the PowerWomen Wealth and Celebrity 100 lists, keeping my ears pricked and pen poised for current event stories--from political sex scandals to celebrity gossip to international affairs. In 2012 I helped to put two South American women on the cover of FORBES Magazine: Modern Family star Sofia Vergara (the top-earning actress on U.S. television) and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who is transforming the BRIC nation into an entrepreneurial powerhouse. Prior to Forbes I was at the Philadelphia CityPaper, where I learned more than any girl ever needs to know about the city's seedier trades. I studied digital journalism at The University of The Arts.
I left Forbes in November, 2013, to pursue other interests on the West Coast.

Anna David On Sex And The Single Girl: 2012

Author Anna David on retro advice for the modern women and why the “rise” of the single women isn’t all it’s chalked up to be.

In 2009, when Anna David set out to follow the advice of 60s icon—and Cosmopolitan editor—Helen Gurley Brown’s legendary book Sex And the Single Girl, she did so with one thing in mind: to land herself a husband.

Gurley Brown’s advice, which ranged from shallow (revamping her wardrobe and apartment) to character-building (travelling solo and learning how to cook), seemed just what she need to become the woman she dreams she should be: the one with the high-earning job, the perfect man and the two and a half kids. “I thought, ’I’m going to be so perfect, I’m definitely going to attract the perfect man,’” she says. “And that didn’t happen.”

Instead, and as is chronicled in David’s memoir-meets-self-helpish Falling For Me,something much more remarkable happened: at 41 and single, Anna David grew up.

It should come as no surprise to ForbesWoman readers that Single Women are on the rise as the most buzzed-about demographic for marketers, media members and economists. David’s book rides that wave with all the bells and whistles; its cover bears the tag line: “How I hung curtains, learned to cook, traveled to Seville and fell in love.”

It’s a cultural moment that’s lasted several years and it looks as if it’s here to stay. We all point to Hanna Rosin’s “The End of Men” and Kate Bolick’s “All The Single Ladies,” both published by the Atlantic, and more recently Janelle Nanos’ “Single By Choice,” but the message, by now, is clear. As a result of a perfect storm of social and economic reasons, women are waiting longer and longer to get married, leaving a cohort of upwardly mobile, educated, single, childless and—at least we’re meant to believe—confident women.

Marketers (who love to throw around the whole “women control 80% of consumer spending” number) have responded gleefully with targeted campaigns, as laid out by both the New York Times and HuffPoin recent weeks. You know, the Citibank ad featuring a mountain climbing enthusiast opting to climb a rock rather than bejewel her finger with one. Or the Honda CRV spot in which a woman tears through her “to-do” list before she says “I Do.”

The trouble is, even with all this attention, is that while the idealized woman spun out by the media is strong, confident and oh-so-pleased with herself, real life singles still have much to struggle with. David takes a different tact than the Rosins of the world:

“I think it’s good that single women are seeing more and more attention,” she told me recently while in town from Los Angeles on a NYC book tour, “But there’s still so much misunderstanding about it.” Despite being told that, as a singleton, she was a part of a new and exciting demographic, David concedes she still felt incomplete, saying “Somehow I internalized that I am single, and so I’m therefore half a person.” As a result, all through her twenties and into her thirties, David says she skimped on critical life steps: “I never took the time to make [my apartment] a space I loved because subconsciously—and it kills me to say this—I was just waiting for a man to come along so our lives would start.”

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“I’m grateful for the choices I’ve been given, but it remains that one of the after-effect of women’s lib is that there are so many choices that we all feel like we’ve made the wrong ones.”

I like Anna David, but comments like this make me wince. (Do men ever complain about having ‘too many choices’?)

The grass is always greener: for every woman who is idealizing marriage, there’s another woman idealizing the escape of hers, and another woman surprised by how her life narrows to diapers and domesticity while her husband continues to advance in the world, and another woman financially struggling because the fairy tale didn’t work out and the workforce turns out to be less than welcoming.

Maybe the problem isn’t one of paralysis of choice, but something Anna refers to earlier in the article — the lack of a prescribed path for any woman who opts (voluntarily or not) for something other than the traditional marriage-and-kids lifescript. Once you step outside of that, you’re a trailblazer whether you like it or not, innovating your woman’s life as you go. Maybe it’s increasingly conventional for a woman to be unconventional, but the fact that you have to choose between being traditional or trailblazing suggests to me that our choices are maybe not yet as vast as we like to think.

Translation: I will NEVER recognize men as having an equally valid human experience, and I will NEVER let go of my own ego issues in order to join another human equally to build a relationship as one. …and in five years, I’ll whine that “he doesn’t validate my own personhood.” Good luck with that !

Yes, men have fewer reproductive choices. For example, a pregnant woman can choose to have the child or an abortion. If the she chooses to have the child, the father has the choice to pay child support, or…er…pay child support. Alternatively, if she chooses to have an abortion and while he wants the child he can either go along with her choice or go along with her choice. As in Animal Farm, all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

It’s about time that we admit: we are too busy, too tired, and not having much fun. As one talk show host would ask us, “How’s this working for you?” If it isn’t, then now is the time to focus on what is important to you.

A spouse, life partner, family member, and a good friend or two are vitally important to everyone’s happiness. Yet too often, the people we love the most are the ones who get the short end of our time, attention, and energy.

Family is critically important—children, parents, siblings and/or a “family” we create ourselves with friends. Each individual brings wonderful moments and memories into our lives, but each relationship also comes with its own challenges and expectations.

When we add our careers on top of these, our burdens start to mount. The third level is where our own personal needs come in: fitness, spiritual life, sports, volunteer work, crafts, hobbies, and all the other activities outside the office, which are also important. When they are all stacked up, we realize that our lives have become giant balancing acts.

I love that people are tracking this phenomenon through the recent outpouring of books and memoirs on the subject, but more importantly that women are willing to embrace this phase of their life. I work for a company called OneTaste, where our mission is to deepen human connection and intimacy through female orgasm. We see so many single women come through our doors who think they need a man to feel gratified in their sexuality, but we teach that women’s power comes through their sex, regardless of whether they have the perfect life and relationship. A woman can be the source of her own turned on life, rather than wait for men before she feels satisfied and worthwhile as a fully powerful, sexual, ignited woman in the world. Go Anna David.